BY Jean-Claude Vacassin |
29 July 2014

When it comes to fitness, as with anything, we all want to see the maximum return for the minimum amount of investment. This is especially true when you consider that the biggest reason people cite for not going to the gym, second only to lack of results, is lack of time. It is not entirely surprising then, to see the recent rise in popularity of super-short and intense workouts in favour of traditional hour-long routines. But are these shorter workouts appropriate for all of us and will they actually deliver what they promise?

There was a time when intense training was the reserve of die hard gym goers and athletes, but there has been a shift towards shorter, sharper sessions in recent years, with countless celebrity endorsements including that of Helen Mirren, who last weak revealed her secret of a 12-minute-a-day workout regime. Studies too have proven that several minutes of high intensity exercise was beneficial for health, specifically in the elderly population. The positive of this shift is that it makes exercise more appealing and accessible to many more people, and anything that encourages higher engagement in exercise has got to be a good thing.

It also highlights the benefits of more focused and intense bouts of exercise over more mindless and lacklustre sessions - a huge positive, given that intensity and consistency are two of the most important factors for long-term success in any programme. However, higher intensity training is not suitable for everyone, as it demands far more of the body and we need to be careful before we make carte blanche statements about is benefits. It is unreasonable to expect that you can simply roll off the sofa and engage in all-out sprint intervals for example, you need to work up to it - or you are likely setting yourself up for injury.

So, as a general rule regular gym goers, the fitter you are, the less time you need to spend actually exercising - think of sprinting versus jogging for example - as it becomes more about quality than quantity. The reason for this is that you will be stronger and more robust, meaning that you can push the body to do things that would not be appropriate for someone who is just starting out and not used to vigorous exercise. The caveat to this would be with beginners with a previously sedentary lifestyle, where any exercise of any duration would have positive benefits, regardless of type and intensity.

The issue for many of us who are new to, or who are not used to, more vigorous forms of exercise, is that we do not have the physical capabilities required to effectively work full throttle, and even if we could muster an impressive all-out sprint or bike interval, we almost certainly could not repeat it. If we take the very popular Tabata protocol for example, a system or approach that is still hugely popular amongst regular gym goers, we can very easily see how what works for some, but is completely unattainable for others of us. The premise of this four-minute approach is that you work all-out for twenty seconds, resting for 10 seconds, repeating eight times - totaling four minutes of work.

For the time conscious amongst us, the research and results are extremely promising in terms of both fitness and fat loss. However, what people have since failed to make absolutely clear to us all, is that the testing was done on stationary bikes with elite cyclists at work efforts of 170 per cent maximum oxygen consumption, which were repeated throughout. What this translates to is perhaps the most physically difficult four minutes you are likely to ever experience, and something almost none of us, beyond elite cyclists, could actually complete - meaning that we will not experience the same benefits.

Although I have highlighted one popular and extreme example, it is one that many people have tried and can relate to, and the same applies to almost all of the four, 10, 12 or 15 minute workouts, in that they will likely work well initially for anyone who is new to exercise, and they will serve the fittest and strongest amongst us better than the rest, but the reality for most of us, is that they are likely to be a false promise, and we would be better off with a more balanced and rounded approach to exercise.

It is also worth noting that, even if we assume that our shorter, more intense workouts deliver all that we need in terms of fitness, there are many different aspects to a rounded fitness programme. Fitness is important, but equally so, if not more so, especially as we age, are structural balance, posture, strength, mobility, flexibility and core conditioning, and most of us would do well to incorporate elements of all of these into our programmes if it is long-term results and pain-free movement that we are after - and these things take time.

For those of us with limited time, short workouts are better than no workout; they might even be all we need if we have a good base of fitness. But for most of us, if what we seek from our fitness programme is a more balanced approach, it will probably require a little more time than four, 10 or 15 minutes.